For my grandmother, Laverne, who was the hungriest person I knew but also the most well-fed.
L is for lemonade. I have yet to taste any better. Lemons from your trees sliced open by knives held by your grandbabies—we were careful. I would not be surprised if those tiled countertops are permanently stained by lemon juice. We were not very tidy, but you didn’t mind. Picked clean of seeds, we would dump the pulpy juice into a tall plastic pitcher, then add water and heaping cups of sugar and stir it all up. We would pour that golden ambrosia over ice in those thin glasses with the oranges on the outsides. I considered making lemonade in your kitchen one last time. There were enough lemons in the backyard to make a gallon. But it didn’t feel right. You wouldn’t be there to taste it. I did take four lemons home with me. I will try to grow trees from the seeds. I should get at least twenty seeds between four lemons. Hopefully one will grant me a gift by sprouting.
A is for apricots, dried. My friend found a worm in an apricot once, so I refused to eat them for years even though you told me they were healthy. You kept them on the kitchen counter alongside kaleidoscopic glass jars of gummy bears. Storing them next to candy did make them look more appealing. By the time I got to your house for the last time, that last visit, the only one without you, those jars and apricots and gummy bears had been thrown away. The countertop was naked without them. When I went grocery shopping, I tossed a bag of apricots into the cart. I had to eat one in your kitchen one more time.
V is for vanilla pudding, a la Meals on Wheels. This was new. I have no memories of pudding in your refrigerator. There were several cups of vanilla and chocolate left in your fridge. I don’t think you liked the vanilla as much as you liked the chocolate. There were only two chocolate cups left, and I ate those. I hadn’t eaten pudding in years. I pretended I was sharing it with you. Somehow, you still cultivate my memories.
E is for eggs, stored in a long green plastic Tupperware. You had three of those. The other two were filled with cheese, white American and yellow American. Your hungry grandbabies needed choices for their cheese. Not all of us like yellow, but some do. Jen thought about taking the Tupperware, once it was emptied of eggs, in remembrance of you. But it was ironically cracked, too cracked to salvage, so into the garbage it went, along with all the eggs and cheese that, though we tried, proved too bountiful to finish before we had to return to our homes.
R is for rainwater. You appreciated the rain. You had sprinklers, even in Southern California, but rainwater was the best water. It rained the first few days of my last visit. Through the kitchen window, I watched the clouds roll in and drops begin to splash against the glass. I sat at the table with Dad, Jen, and the realtor responsible for selling your home, and those three discussed the particulars with which I have no experience. So I watched the rain slip down a sagging wire of the porchlight. When the drops fell, they danced and skipped across concrete and earth, nourishing your orange tree and lemons and flowers and grass that strangers would soon come to enjoy and call their own.
N is for nuts, Brazil nuts particularly. You always encouraged us to eat nuts. Two Brazil nuts a day would provide us with plenty of selenium. I didn’t know what selenium was, but you said it was important. That’s all that mattered. I bought a jar of mixed nuts the other day, and a thick Brazil nut was at the very top. Then I found another. Two.
E is for emptying the sink, the sink for washing oranges, lemons, dishes, and your grandbabies. You were sure to get the water behind our ears and between every little toe. “This little piggy went to the market . . . ” My hair was washed in that sink. Pasta was drained and rinsed. Beauty and cleanliness went hand-in-hand with nutrition. Down the drain went dirt and food scraps. I always liked turning on your garbage disposal. It was so loud and efficient. I made dinner in your skillet tonight, in my own home, and turned on my garbage disposal as I washed it. All the food bits were ripped to pieces, too small for me to grasp, buried too deeply in the plumbing, but I can still smell the aroma they left behind.
Moriah Maresh wrote her first story when she was seven years old and hasn’t stopped. She is a faculty member of Goodwin University’s English department and holds a bachelor’s in English from The Ohio State University, a masters in English from Central Connecticut State University, a MFA in Creative Writing from Fairfield University, and TEFL certification. Currently, she is working on a new collection of nonfiction essays and her first fantasy novel.